George Strait doesn’t make many public appearances these days after officially retiring from the road. But he’ll be making a “special appearance” at the inaugural Legends of Music Row Festival set to transpire October 13-15 in Key West, Florida at the Coffee Butler Amphitheater.
Now celebrating five years of gathering in festival form, KOKEFest attracts a huge crowd of local KOKEheads, as well as people from across the country who want to get the genuine Texas country experience, including those who regularly listen to the station remotely online.
British-born, and Australian-raised singer and actor Olivia Newton-John passed away on Monday, August 8th at the age of 73 after a long battle with breast Cancer, leaving the world bereft of one of the most cherished and recognizable entertainers in history whose work and influence bridged the worlds of acting and music.
The fact that this tribute starts off with an unheard recording of John Prine who’s been gone now for two years now speaks to just how long it takes to put something like this together. It’s also one of the multiple reasons this is not just ‘another’ tribute record. A lot of love went into this one.
Extremely timely, the mid-tempo song delves head first into the unusual moments we’re all living through that have left many of us with unsettled feelings. Lines within the song such as, “Urban feels suburban, Main Street ain’t Main” and “Couple hundred dollars feels more like change” will immediately resonate.
We love to speak abstractly about the healing power of music, as if it contains some supernatural powers that science could never explain. Most certainly, few other things can shift moods and improve your outlook on life than music, and without downstream repercussions. But can it really save a life?
Country music is country music, and the best definition of what country music is, is that you know it when you hear it. It’s self-evident. But the genre has birthed many subgenres, many stylistic movements over the years, and at times has seen a splintering and Balkanization.
It’s always exciting when one of your favorite country artists like Dwight Yoakam, Alan Jackson, or Sturgill Simpson decides to cut a bluegrass album. It’s pretty rare to have a bluegrass outfit decide to flip the script and make a country album. But that’s exactly what long-time bluegrass duo Dailey & Vincent have decided to do.
On Tuesday, August 2nd, Robert Earl Keen and his band were in New Orleans performing at the House of Blues. After the show and on their way back to Texas, the tour bus started moving very slow. The driver pulled over to check the engine, and when he opened the engine door, the bus ignited into flames.
There are now two consecutive country music festivals planned for Key West, Florida for the Winter of 2023: The 6th Annual Mile 0 Fest featuring Red Dirt, Texas, and Americana, and the 90s-centric Key Western Festival, happening the very next week.
Though you won’t see any press releases about it, or social media posts about it from their personal accounts, both Tyler Childers and Chris Stapleton have been spotted in the region with their boots on the ground in Kentucky directly helping local residents after the historic flooding.
With their sixth album, Whiskey Myers chose to do the producing themselves, and more so than any of their previous releases, lean heavy in the Southern rock direction almost exclusively, including springing for the horn section and a backup chorus. Yes, this is at the expense of some country tracks.
Don’t look now, but we’re gonna have to stop complaining about how how all the losers in the country music industry keep criminally overlooking Kaitlin Butts, and start recognizing that she’s finally getting the recognition she has deserved for years thanks to the strength of her 2022 album “What Else Can She Do.”
Since 2013, vocal powerhouse and larger-than-life performer Joanna Cotten has been helping Eric Church instill passion, soul, and energy into his music, both in the studio and on stage. She’s been Eric Church’s secret weapon, and right-hand woman on many of his most landmark and powerful performances.
After a quarter century, and a very messy last eight years or so, Gary Allan has just made it official: he’s leaving his long time label home of Universal Music Group Nashville. And though we won’t know for a while just where he’ll land or how everything will shake out, it feels like it can only be a positive development.
Everybody wants to be 90s country these days, but nobody wants to live through an era without the wide proliferation of the internet, and when cell phones looked like carry-on luggage. But if you want the real stuff, you’re always best going directly to the source, like Ronnie Dunn.
Sam Hunt was scheduled to headline the Boots & Hearts Music Festival Friday, August 5th in Burl’s Creek, Ontario in Canada, but he will no longer be attending after he announced he is not being allowed into the country. Jake Owen has instead been tapped as the Friday night headliner.
The iconic Ernest Tubb Record Shop on Lower Broadway in Nashville has officially been sold to a group of investors for $18.3 million, as well as the current contents of the Record Shop including the inventory and fixtures in a separate deal. The new owners include Ernest Dale Tubb III, musician Ilya Toshinskiy, and investor Brad Bars.
The International Bluegrass Music Awards, or IBMA’s announced the nominees earlier this week, and it felt anything but perfunctory. In previous years you had the usual suspects up for all the major awards. It feels completely different here in 2022, and for good reason. Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, and more.
There are few things more satisfying that getting in on the ground floor with an artist, and watching them rise as their music finds an audience and begins to spread like a wildfire through the grassroots. It’s not just talent that determines who takes off, and who doesn’t. Timing is a huge part of it.
A 7-year-old song receiving some 95 million streams in a year is quite remarkable. But as we’re seeing all across music and country music specifically, consumers who are just not connecting with new music today are finding favor with the back catalogs of artists that sometimes they’re just discovering.
Based in Texas, but affecting audiences well beyond, the songwriting of Courtney Patton is cherished among many distinguishing and attentive listeners for the poetry and insight it contains, and Courtney Patton’s often stunning delivery. She’s also revealed herself to be a badass boss lady.
“American Heartbreak” by Zach Bryan has been showing all indications of being one of those “sticky” albums, selling another 24,803 in albums and equivalents again last week. Even more interestingly, the album retook over the #2 spot from the new Luke Combs album “Growin’ Up” two weeks ago.
Mary Jane Thomas, who Hank Williams Jr. married in 1990, died due to complications of a plastic surgery procedure, according to the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s autopsy report. The official cause of death was ruled as “Pneumothorax due to perforated parietal pleura during liposuction…”
